Different

An hour-long wait at the pharmacy gives one time to think. I'm always in a weird mood when I'm at the pharmacy. I always dread going, too. It's a particularly awful experience for me because one of my medications is the kind for which they rarely carry a full refill. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of times I have collected a refill without something annoying going wrong with it. So I've trained my hot head to keep cool - especially now that I am freshly familiarized with the feeling of bearing the brunt of verbal abuse springing from a disgruntled patron's fury - nobody is trying to ruin my evening and I know that the last thing the pharmacy clerks want is to see me get upset at them. We just want to get through the day without getting killed or fired.

Maybe it's because I know I'm going to pick up medication pertaining to mental health that I'm always oddly self-aware during my pharmacy visits and usually come to the conclusion that I look like a hobo. I'm going to attribute this weird state of mind to the fact that by the time I actually make it to the pharmacy, I have usually exhausted the supply of one of my two medications a couple days prior. The folks at Kaiser are rarely short on Zoloft, which is treatment for depression; but the medication I take for my Attention Deficit Disorder, Strattera, is usually the drug in deficit at my local provider. I sit in the waiting room, imagining that the techs are searching for my obscure crazy pills like a college student would rummage through the couch cushions, looking for loose change to pay the pizza guy. And during this time, while attempting to entertain myself with the one game on my terrible phone, I am given ample time to reflect on the stupid things I have said or done while not under the influence of my "function in society" pill.

The television in the waiting room is set to a station that exclusively plays shows that nobody watches anymore. These are shows that are outdated, but nowhere near deserving the title "classic." Speculating as to the contents of this rerun of Lois and Clark (as the TV audio is never loud enough to make the dialogue decipherable) I'm transported to the 90s: the stomping grounds of the worlds most embarrassing childhood (mine). So if it isn't bad enough to remember my recent social missteps, I'm also harkened back to an age where it was easier to count the events in which I didn't make myself look like a doofus.

Truthfully, I wear my badge with pride. I'm different. Any of my elementary school teachers could tell you that. My parents and my brothers could tell you that. In fact, every person who ever encountered me during the first eighteen years of my life could tell you that I was an odd nut. Since high school, I like to think that I've gotten better at disguising it. But there isn't a cell in my body that wants to be normal: I've always wanted to be extraordinary. As it would be, the road to success for someone like me requires the acquisition of fluid dexterity in disciplines I find profoundly unsavory.

I'm thankful that my childhood wasn't characterized by a hairstyle shaped by the circular motion of my school's toilet water. I was certainly picked on verbally by many of my elementary school classmates, but their words all rolled off me because I was already completely convinced that I was better and smarter than them anyway. How such a paralyzing lack of self-confidence and a hearty superiority complex coexisted in my 8-year-old brain, I don't know; but I know that my worldview back then considered everyone but me to be tragically mentally handicapped. That's probably why I had no friends.

The real bullies in my life didn't steal my lunch money and they didn't dump me head-first into the garbage can. My real bullies were the instincts to do and say things that were unthinkably idiotic to a more socially sensible person. And it really wasn't that I didn't know better or that I wouldn't take responsibility for my actions. I was not immune to my parents' mortified responses to my behavior. But I could not figure out what to do to prevent such inexcusable lapses in judgement from repeating themselves the next day so as to avoid the overwhelming shame I daily faced. My chronic failure to behave in alliance with my better judgement felt like trying to overcome alien hand syndrome.

That's why I'm glad for my medication. I used to be offended at the fact that my parents were adamant that I take my pills because I believed that any substance administered with the intent to alter behavior was an attempt to inhibit someone's true identity. I was afraid of becoming normal. But Mom and Dad weren't trying to force-feed me a pill-shaped lobotomy: they were trying to keep me from being like the lobotomized patient who wants to go grocery shopping without his alien hand shoving oranges in his coat pocket and groping the cashier while she processes his purchase. So I guess I can take comfort that I'm not in line at the pharmacy because I'm crazy but because I don't want a different crazy coming out than what I really am.

I'm happy that the media has taken a recent liking to "nerds" and "geeks." Somehow I fear that it has some sort of a correlation with the hipster movement, but seeing as how it somehow has made the "uncool" people the trendsetters, I'll take it as a compliment. While I tend to be pretty politically conservative, I sure as heck don't like someone telling me how I should be - and compared to many, I've had it REAL easy - so I don't like seeing others coerced into assimilation by activists of either political persuasion. I'm not suggesting that we're perfect the way we are and shouldn't change. But when God made us, He didn't make a mistake. We weren't made as broken vessels so we could fix ourselves (or each other), but so that we can understand that the love of God is a gift that we could never earn, even if we were perfect.

While I often wish that I had a better handle on my own life, it's in my darkest moments of shame and despair that God reminds me that what He needs from me is not perfection but surrender. As much as I wish I had finished college in four years instead of five and with a 3.anything GPA, as much as I wish I'd had the discipline to be in shape by now, as much as I wish I was making more money and had a bigger savings and the ability to pay a mortgage, as much as I wish I'd had the dating wherewithal to be a family man by now, as much as I wish I was cleaner, tidier, and better focused; my only prayer now can be that God be glorified in me. I may see my life as merely a shadow of what I might have done if I'd tried harder, but God sees me as I am and loves me as I am. God doesn't want the "would'a," "could'a," or "should'a" version of me: he wants and loves the "is" version of me. As I wait for the rest of my Strattera pills to arrive at the pharmacy this weekend, I can take comfort  in the fact that I am nothing short of "beloved."

~Jeremy~